Migration as a Capability: Discussing Sen’s Capability Approach in the Context of International Migration

Migration is a form of spatial and social transplant from one local and national context to another. Migration trajectories often expose the underlying intersections of social relations and social hierarchies that underpin cultural and social national environments. Migrants who encounter those complex structural inequalities must learn to negotiate classed, gendered and racialised social relations and seek the most suitable social positions within new systems. This article builds on Amartya Sen’s capability approach to conceptualise migrants’ embeddedness in the framework of social inequalities and explores the relationship between individual choices, resources and entitlements. It points towards patterns of advantage and disadvantage that frame migrants’ opportunities and draws tacit analytical, theoretical and methodological links that have the innovative potential for the study of migration. Building on the parallels between studies in the fields of social inequalities and migration, this article argues that Sen’s analytical and conceptual approach provides innovative insights into migration experiences, and Sen’s unique reasoning opens up new avenues for the discussion of migrants’ social justice

Local Civil Society

Epdf and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Drawing on place-based field investigations and new empirical analysis, this original book investigates civil society at local level. The concept of civil society is contested and multifaceted, and this text offers assessment and clarification of debates concerning the intertwining of civil society, the state and local community relations. Analysing two Welsh villages, the authors examine the importance of identity, connection with place and the impact of social and spatial boundaries on the everyday production of civil society. Bringing into focus questions of biography and temporality, the book provides an innovative account of continuities and changes within local civil society during social and economic transformation

Chronic Poverty Report 2023: Pandemic Poverty

The Chronic Poverty Report 2023: Pandemic Poverty sets out to investigate the highly negative effects of the Covid-19 restrictions, and most importantly, the success or otherwise of the measures pursued to mitigate those effects on people in and near poverty. The leading message is that if restrictions were necessary, they should be minimised, and complemented by measures to mitigate their negative effects. During the pandemic, such measures were in most countries completely inadequate to prevent impoverishment and downward socio-economic mobility. The report makes suggestions on what needs to be done in a similar future crisis to avoid the economic and social reversals we have seen since 2020, and some steps on the road to recovery. This first CPAN report on Pandemic Poverty is the product of a long-term partnership across 18 countries in the global south. 12 of those countries participated in the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network’s Covid-19 Poverty Monitoring Initiative. These revisited life history respondents from pre-pandemic qualitative research and caught up with their lived experiences during the pandemic. This was designed as a people centred complement to the high-frequency phone surveys which were undertaken in many countries during the pandemic. Authors from some of the same countries and others based at the Institute of Development Studies, were involved in writing this report. They carried out key informant interviews with policymakers and implementers to track and understand the development of policy responses during the pandemic, and to analyse the policy discourses in each country. The co-authors met monthly for six months while the report was being written to ensure coherence

Międzynarodowi tropiciele: biograficzne wymiary umiędzynarodowienia edukacji uniwersyteckiej.

International Pathfinders is a systematic study of the biographical significance of educational mobility within a European context. It builds upon autobiographical narrative material gathered through the EuroIdentities project. The study aims to combine the elements of social theory and the most recent research in the area of internationalisation of higher education with biographical material in order to understand and push the academic debate even further. This article employs a three-stage sequence of educational mobility – leaving home, the experience itself, and the return – as a core structure for discussing and presenting the cases. Within that framework, issues such as influence of cultural and symbolic capitals and specific characteristics of the educational structures of opportunities are explored. Biographical consequences of educational mobility take the form of an international frame of reference, allowing international students to navigate in complex international relations, and can be considered the source of social status both in an international and a national context.Artykuł ten jest szkicem biograficznych wymiarów internacjonalizacji kształcenia na poziomie wyższym w kontekście europejskim. Materiały autobiograficzne wykorzystane w artykule pochodzą ze zbioru projektu ‘EuroIdentities’. Szkic ma na celu systematyczną analizę materiału empirycznego w świetle istniejących teorii socjologicznych i najnowszych badań. Artykuł rozpatruje mobilność edukacyjną z punku widzenia jej sekwencyjnych stadiów – wyjazd, pobyt i powrót – co daje możliwość systematyzacji i prezentacji materiału biograficznego. W ramach tego trzy-stopniowego procesu szkic rozpatruje kwestie kapitałów kulturowego i symbolicznego oraz zróżnicowanej możliwości realizacji planów działania z punktu widzenia trzech odmian jej instytucjonalnego uwzorowania. Biograficzne konsekwencje mobilności edukacyjnej są rozpatrywane w ramach obecności ‘międzynarodowego układu odniesienia’, który pomaga studentom zorientować się w skomplikowanej międzynarodowej rzeczywistości i może być rozpatrywany jako źródło statusu społecznego na poziomie zarówno narodowym jak i międzynarodowym